The tricks and lies of conspiracy theorists

This week’s Mediahuis/INM Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

I heard tech innovator and entrepreneur Mark Little talk about Artificial Intelligence on the Brendan O’Connor Show last Sunday week. It was sensational. 

Close to the end of the interview he said that we are in an emergency situation and groupings like the EU need to get their act together and begin setting up regulatory agencies to make sure that transparency and accountability are always at the forefront.

 

I constantly ask what is true and what is not true. I have no real problem saying that far too often I find myself lost and not exactly sure what I believe and what I don’t believe. Whom should I believe?

Early in the interview Mark Little said that liars and conspiracy theorists don’t have to persuade us of what they are saying is true but persuade us that everything is false. 

That’s pure brilliance and I have to admit that I often find myself a victim of liars and conspiracy theorists. 

I can listen to someone and no matter how outrageous might be the content of what they are saying I sneakily wonder if there be some truth in what they are saying.

I often listen in to a US right wing radio station called Patriot Radio. It is wall-to-wall anti everything to do with the Democrat Party, it sneers and belittles President Biden and his entire team. While I find all that it says is outrageous I do come away from listening to it asking might there be some truth in what it is saying about its enemies.

So much information is thrown at us at great speed it is close to impossible to decipher everything.

 

Advertising must work, otherwise corporations would not be spending such large sums of money making their products attractive and sellable.

How much of it is true, how much of it is false?

The European Commission estimates that approximately 40 per cent of environmental claims made by companies contain information that is ‘completely unsustainable’, while 53 per cent of environmental claims made by companies contain ‘vague or misleading information’. They are startling statistics.

I hear debates on radio and television and come away having no idea whom I should believe.

Scroll through any social media outlet and you will be bamboozled with what you will see and hear. 

There are no filters in social media, no sub-editors to correct copy.

Anyone can say what they like.  And then the  vitriol and nastiness that appears. We are bombarded with scam emails, text messages, phone calls. How at all are we going to handle AI? 

Mark Little says that if we are scared of the new technology we are not paying attention and if we are not excited by it we have no imagination. What happens if your’e imagination runs away with you? 

Ever before the advent of AI, Pontius Pilate in reply to Jesus’ claiming he was witness to the truth, asks him what is truth? (St John 18: 38) Might it be that truth is something like prudence, it sits somewhere in the middle?